Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

“Sorry about the wait.”

The super high school girl was back.

Kumokawa Seria’s smile was shining bright as she opened the front door from within.

“Everything’s fine now, so come on in. No, wait! Everything was fine from the beginning, of course! My apartment was as clean as the perfect model room!!”

“(Hey, what do you think is inside that tightly-shut door right next to the entrance? I see some paper and clear files sticking out from below it.)”

“(That’s probably the sealed-off room where she shoved everything during her rush cleaning job. More rooms will inevitably lead to sloppier work, so let’s ignore it.)”

Night truly had fallen.

Kamijou was somewhat nervous about visiting a girl’s room, but he knew he could not let the room’s owner notice that tension. Otherwise, his adolescence would explode.

“Heh heh. What’s got your shoulders so tense? Do you think something might happen, boy?”

He could not let her notice!!!!!!

They removed their shoes and stepped inside.

Mitsuari neatly lined up her own indoor slippers and then did the same for Kamijou’s shoes. She apparently needed everything to line up nicely.

Kamijou was familiar with living alone in his school dorm, but a luxury apartment was something else entirely. He was grateful enough to have a room to himself since some schools made students share dorm rooms, but this had several different rooms all for just the one person!

“Let’s head to the living room for now,” said Kumokawa. “There’s something I want to discuss.”

“Phew, I’m so tired,” said Mitsuari. “Can’t we just get to sleep already?”

In this case, it was not surprising. Despite her wealthy upbringing – or perhaps because of it – Mitsuari Ayu just came out and said things like that. This rich person space did not bother her and she simply walked along the wooden flooring while the room’s owner showed her the way.

The living room alone felt like it could hold three or four of Kamijou’s entire dorm room.

First of all, the TV was huge. The glass table and leather sofa looked like something from a corporate office instead of a home. Instead of limiting things to the everyday necessities, there was also some workout equipment in a corner of the large room. Kamijou did not think they were meant as interior decorating, but there were a few large unfilled water tanks. He heard a quiet motor and saw a white boxy thing approaching him. It was a robot that looked like a hospital’s minifridge with wheels attached.

It had a door, so Mitsuari (in sweaty gym clothes) bent over to check inside (while sticking out her small butt with shorts clinging to it) and she found it was full of bottles of soda and iced coffee.

According to the room’s owner, “It’s convenient for lazing around with a drink.”

“Then if you will excuse me.”

Mitsuari grabbed a bottle of iced tea and pressed it against her soft cheek while throwing herself into one of the leather sofas surrounding the glass table. Instead of a long and big one, this one was made for a single person. It was like the seat for the birthday girl.

Some other furniture could move around just like the fridge, so that was apparently the Kumokawa-style(?). Even the closet and side table were wandering around with the help of small wheels.

“Hey.” Kumokawa pressed a finger against her temple. “That’s real leather, so don’t jump into it in those sweaty gym clothes. I’m willing to wait, so you go take a shower already!”

“Ehh? Won’t this boost its value?”

The pointy-haired boy clicked his tongue at failing to use his phone to record the line about taking a shower, but they had bigger issues.

Angry but smiling, Kumokawa Seria took her next action.

“Is that so? But an object’s value is dependent on someone who sees that value in it.”

“What are you muttering about, you old-…”

“I will forgive it just this once, so go, pent-up teenage boy! No one sees greater value in a sweaty middle school girl!!”

She shoved him forward.

Mitsuari had been sitting on a one-person sofa, so when she tried to scoot over and out of the way, there was not enough room. The two middle schoolers ended up tangled together and crammed into the space between the armrests.

“Eek.”

The fault lay in the design.

Prestigious Tokiwadai Middle School’s gym clothes had adopted a true athletic style, so they were not even short-sleeved. Perhaps because the school existed in a boy-free space, the design cared not for the girls’ shy hearts. Both armpits were left fully open for a focus solely on functionality.

That was not what she wanted to be wearing while sweaty from some hard exercise and with a teenage boy right next to her.

Girls locker rooms were always so fragrant of deodorant because those girls’ pride demanded it!!

“Hnyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Mitsuari Ayu beat on the side of that pointy-haired head with her unopened drink bottle (500mL of iced tea), rolled onto the floor to get away, and waved her hands around while red in the face.

“I…I…what…I.”

“Ha ha ha. Why are you so embarrassed now? You were all over him and even had him carry you before, sweaty middle school girl. Hmm?”

“Gnyaahh!? I-I will be borrowing your bath!! Excuse me!!”

“You need clothes.”

Mitsuari had tossed aside Kamijou’s limp form, but she was pinned in place by Kumokawa’s words. She quickly threw open the wheeled closet slowly crossing the living room.

“Wh-why do you have uniforms from so many different schools? And in your size?”

“Ahem.”

Kumokawa Seria cleared her throat in a super suspicious way.

Mitsuari was still confused, but she had no choice in the matter. She grabbed a Tokiwadai summer uniform and finally left on her bath time journey. Hopefully she knew where the bath was in this labyrinthine apartment.

Kumokawa chose one of the longer sofas around the glass table and lay down on it instead of sitting.

“Now, Kamijou boy. If you have nothing better to do then enjoy the girl sweat soaked into that leather, could you join me in conversation instead?”

He apparently needed to straighten up with perfect posture if he was to deflect these false accusations. He was seated in a single-person sofa, but he could not relax.

Also…

“She only grabbed a uniform, so I wonder what she expects to do after the shower. That parking garage was like a sauna, so her underwear has to be soaked too.”

“I have no obligation to lend her underwear too. She might be able to buy something basic at the convenience store down below, but this should be more fun if I don’t tell her that. Boy, don’t you want to see what becomes of a willful girl who is forced to hold down her miniskirt at all costs?”

“Not what becomes of her, no.”

“Hm, so are you the type to want some backstory and context in your porn? It takes a true connoisseur to understand the important of Chapter 1, boy.”

“What are we even talking about anymore???”

He wanted to run away and shout for Mitsuari, but he heard the shower running. If he burst in while she was changing, he would upgrade his false accusations to Version 2.0. Yes, to something truly devastating like accusations of being a panty thief only interested in the wet and just-removed variety.

“Let’s use this chance to talk.”

Kumokawa beckoned while lying on the sofa. He just about got up, but that was apparently not what the alluring upperclassman was going for. She had instead activated the sensor to call over the fridgebot and she pulled a bottle of strong carbonated water from the door.

“Y-you’re drinking unflavored carbonated water straight from the bottle?”

“Hm? When I’m in the mood for water, I’m in the mood for water, not for tea. And wouldn’t it scare you if the label called it natural water but it had a flavor?”

Why did people pay money for simple water when they were not even stranded out in the desert?

That was a tough one for a middle school boy.

Kamijou himself removed the cap from the bottle of iced tea since he was not sure what else to do with it.

“So what did you want to talk about?”

“L.S.S.”

The way the shower sounds stimulated his imagination was bad for his heart, but it did not seem to affect Kumokawa in the same way. Could she tune it out as no more than featureless white noise? The genius busty high school girl’s muscles were relaxing like she was swaying in a train seat.

She seemed close to dozing off in the sofa, but she managed to continue speaking.

“I believe I gave you a quick explanation earlier, but this has passed the point where we can simply brush off the embers that have fallen on us. We need to be ready to repel any form of attack around the clock, whereas they only have to keep up the attacks until just one gets through. We only have one life, so a defensive battle would be a poor strategy here.”

Embers, attack, gets through, one life, defensive battle.

Things had been unusual enough already with the winged dinosaur and assassin sisters, but hearing it again felt really strange to him. Lives hung in the balance, like something from a video game. And all for the convenience of someone he had never even met.

He had seen billboards for L.S.S., but when it came to a specific individual, nothing was known.

It was like having a masked serial killer wandering around.

“But won’t the police…no, in this city it would be Anti-Skill. Anyway, won’t they take care of this? Senpai, you said yourself that the cover-up methods used with the dragon and the parking garage would show similarities that could be traced back to the culprit, right?”

“Continue.”

“Well, doesn’t that mean we haven’t been bested at every turn? The more they do, the more evidence they leave behind. And L.S.S. is a big company, right? A scandal would be a huge deal for them, so aren’t these failed attacks doing damage to them as well? If Anti-Skill does a household search – or whatever it’s called with a company – and carries out tons of evidence and documents in cardboard boxes, won’t everything they’ve been trying to hide come to light?”

He did not think he could be wrong about this.

He at least thought it was more realistic than a strange action blockbuster where the shirtless and machinegun-toting hero attacks the corporate headquarters all on his own.

However.

He was supposed to be showing Kumokawa Seria a more realistic path, but she did not seem at all troubled. She looked like this was exactly the question she had been expecting.

“I really don’t think that will happen.”

“Why not?”

“Even if traces of common cover-up methods are found at the scenes of the dragon attack and the assassin attack, they will lead to something that no public organization can touch. And that means Anti-Skill can’t act on it.”

“?”

“What good is a method of covering up evidence that becomes evidence itself? Those methods are only used once finetuned so they can’t be used in court, no matter how suspicious they might seem. For example, everyone will suspect a flesh soup in a bathtub full of powerful acid, but if all of the DNA has been destroyed, it doesn’t ‘count’ as a corpse. That is generally considered hard to actually pull off, but Academy City tech can do it.”

It was unclear how serious she was being about that dark joke, but she followed it up with a gulp of her strong carbonated water. A capable high school girl could apparently inspire a restless feeling from the movement of her throat alone.

“Pwah. To sum up, I’m saying the cover-up method will tell ''us'' who to investigate, but it wouldn’t be enough to convince the average person. We have to fight this fight alone. Pointing at L.S.S. and saying ‘officer, they’re up to no good’ would only make people suspect we’d lost our minds.”

“But!”

“Anti-Skill will not act. And if that public organization won’t act, L.S.S. will forever reserve the right to attack us. Do you get it now? Now is not the time to complain that life isn’t fair. If you want to survive, then you have to put in the work yourself.”

“Are you for real?”

He could not even drink that 140-yen iced tea.

With the giant dragon and the three assassin sisters, they had not exactly escaped unscathed. They had worked hard to survive, but he had no idea how many national laws and Academy City regulations they had violated in the process. He suspected he would go pale in the face if he looked it all up in the Six Codes or whatever.

However.

“Things are different now. They attacked us, so we had no choice to defend ourselves. I feel like we had a clear line we weren’t willing to cross. But you’re talking about something else, Senpai. You’re talking about attacking them ourselves, but we’re not talking about leveling up in an RPG. We might be able to convince ourselves it’s for the best, but everyone else will look at us and only see criminals.”

“Hm? I think you’re confused about something here.”

“?”

“If we do things your way, they’ll just keep attacking us. And when we’re only defending ourselves, it only takes one mistake for the axe to fall and lop off our heads.”

“But, um, but.”

“Attacking L.S.S. is the only way to survive this. If you want, you can think of ourselves as trapped in a burning building and the giant L.S.S. building is the only exit.”

“You said Anti-Skill won’t act, but what about those assassins? We saw them handcuffed and loaded into Anti-Skill vehicles!”

“Those professional fighters know all the loopholes, so do you really think they’re going to talk in a simple interrogation room? Keep in mind they probably assassinated an L.S.S. guest researcher so he wouldn’t talk. And by probably, I mean almost certainly. They know all too well what happens if they talk…no, ''if the monstrous VIPs suspect they might talk''.”

Kumokawa Seria was not swayed.

Her slender throat moved alluringly as she stimulated her esophagus with the powerful carbonation.

“To be blunt, we can’t wait around for those two to give in. The odds are extremely low that will ever happen. And even if they build up a laughable friendly relationship in that closed room, another assassin will kill them the instant they show any sign of talking.”

“…”

Silence followed.

But not because they were at a loss for words. A slight change had come over the pointy-haired boy.

Kumokawa removed her bewitching lips from the drink bottle.

“''Something just changed in you.'' But I doubt this is some kind of awakening. …Hard to believe this is the chicken who ran away from danger, abandoning two girls there.”

“You said I could run away.”

“To be honest, I had to tense my stomach when you came back that night. Because I thought the tears would start flowing if I didn’t.”

“Bff!?”

High school girls were truly dangerous since they hit you when you least suspected it.

After a blow from that unpredictable side that Mitsuari lacked, Kamijou had to work hard not to choke.

“Anyway, our only escape from this deadly labyrinth is to attack L.S.S. and create an exit. Nothing can change that at this point. Think of it like Russian roulette. The six shooter only has the one bullet, but the odds of death aren’t static. With each round, the cylinder turns and the odds are updated. …With each attack on us, the overall odds of death go up, boy.”

“But…”

“This will never end until L.S.S. gives up on the entire thing. The question is how far we have to go if we want to end it. At the very least, I can tell you Anti-Skill isn’t up to the task. And we aren’t the ones making the rules; L.S.S. is. So the quickest route to ending this is to adopt their rules and show them hell.”

“So you’re saying we should stoop to their level? That’s like someone who’s afraid of robbers putting a hood over the criminal’s heads and beating the snot out of them!”

He could not let this slide. If he did, he might find himself on a set of rails headed in a very bad direction. He raised his voice to that end, but he never managed to finish his argument.

He was cut off, but by what?

He heard glass shattering.

And he heard an ear-splitting scream from another room.

“What the hell!?”

He immediately stood up from the single-person sofa.

For some reason, Kumokawa moved to a corner of the living room instead of toward the sound. He looked over in confusion and saw her grabbing a metal bar from the workout equipment there. It was the barbell bar used for bench pressing. It looked heavier than a metal pipe or baseball bat.

“Senpai, where’s the bathroom!?”

“On the left of the hallway. All the water pipes head either there or to the kitchen.”

Kumokawa remained calm, but she had been surprisingly careless. That weapon was so long that it caught on the door and in the hallway. A weapon longer than a bamboo sword must have been a poor choice. Kamijou was too impatient to wait for her, so he ran on ahead. As large as the place was, it was still a home. As long as he knew where to go, it would not take him long to arrive.

Now was not the time to hesitate in front of the changing room.

The door was already open and Mitsuari Ayu had slumped to the hallway’s wooden flooring after grabbing only a towel and gathering it around her flat chest. She was leaning against the wall and trembling with her hair still wet.

“Mitsuari.”

She did not even turn toward him.

She was pointing weakly inside the bathroom.

She did not seem injured, but he could not perform a careful examination given her state of undress. He decided to leave that job to Kumokawa once she arrived, so he instead looked in the direction she was pointing.

“…?”

He stepped inside.

Just one step.

She had to have been running the shower, but there was no sauna-like steam. It was escaping somehow.

The changing room contained a sink and a larger washing machine. He made a pointed effort to not look at the gym clothes and underwear in the clothes basket as he walked further in.

She really must have been in a hurry because the smoked glass door into the bath was sitting open.

(What in the world happened?)

He had heard glass breaking along with her scream.

He heard a sound like pouring rain. She must not have turned off the shower. The bath was fairly large, but he felt no desire to set foot inside. But not just because he did not want to get his feet wet.

He saw something other than water that was clear and glittering in the light.

They were glass shards.

“…”

While hesitant to walk further, he looked up.

And he saw it.

The bath must have been on the outside wall because it had a window. That was where the glass had come from. Instead of a single point breaking from a jab by the tip of an umbrella, it was more like nothing remained except for the window frame. That explained the lack of steam.

But that was not all.

The water and glass were not the only transparent things in there.

There was a liquid on the window frame, but this was a lot stickier and gooier. It looked awfully biological, which made it all the creepier. He felt no desire to touch that. Why had Mitsuari screamed? What if it had not been due to the glass breaking? If she had seen something, then ''what'' exactly had she seen?

A creature.

A strange living thing.

A Biohacker toy.

L.S.S.

“What do you say now, boy?”

He heard a voice from the changing room.

It was Kumokawa who had set down her handmade weapon and started looking after Mitsuari.

“It doesn’t look like we were attacked by anything as big as a dragon, but smaller things have their own unique uses. Such as doing drone work. If they’ve released a bunch of small animals with cameras and transmitters on their backs, they might be able to search us out.”

“You mean…?”

“Our safe place here was compromised in five minutes. If you don’t want to be attacked, I suggest we move elsewhere.”